I checked out the forums and found a previous thread about this, but the problem there was that they needed OpenGL 2.0 and didn't have it. Well I have 3.0 and my starlanes are invisible. They work, but I have to use the fleets to see where they will go to find them.

I'm running Kubuntu 17.10, Free Orion 0.4.7-2 (from the repositories). The game just says "build ???". I have python 2.7. My video card is a Radeon HD 4890. I don't know specifically what drivers for it are installed because I don't know where to look for that info, but it is working with just whatever comes with Kubuntu, I haven't downloaded anything extra. I'm running at full screen at a resolution of 1920x1080. I've tried changing the resolution and playing windowed but that hasn't helped.

I checked all the settings I can find and they seem to indicate that the starlanes should be on. I even tried increasing the size of them in case that helped, but to no avail. I'll include a screenshot so you can see the map and the settings (that I know about anyway, I couldn't see anything else that might affect it). The problem has existed since the beginning of this game, which is the first game I've run with this version. Saving the game, and reloading (even restarting the game) hasn't changed anything so it's not a one-time glitch. I've run FreeOrion on this computer before, and had no problems then.

Hm, Ubuntu 17.10 runs with Wayland. Does Kubuntu 17.10 too? In this case it would be interesting if 18.04 LTS (where Canonical switched back to X because of issues with Wayland) shows the same issue, but I guess it's probably not that easy to temporarily install 18.04 on your machine just to check this. Maybe you can switch your Kubuntu 17.10 to X?

Another interesting thing would be if the issue also shows up with current master. So, if you can build FO yourself, could you try that?

Thanks for those ideas, guys. I'm fairly sure that I'm running Wayland, but the Kubuntu login screen doesn't seem to have an option to switch, and I can't find any info online about other ways to do it. I am planning on upgrading to 18.04, but I'm not sure when I'll get around to it yet. So I guess unless there are any other ideas, I will have to wait until I can do that to see if it even works. I'm sure you can imagine the pain it is not knowing where your supply lines are and stuff. Weird problem.

I would definitely recommend trying to compile FO yourself, it's pretty easy on Linux. That might eliminate some weird conflict between the library versions your freeorion package expects to rely on versus what actually on your machine. (I know your package manager would normally keep that all sorted out, but I think that in some situations some trouble can still arise.) Here are the most current general build instructions, and here are some more detailed instructions specific to Linux, but also slightly stale (such as mentioning a slightly stale boost version).

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So Murdoc, the FreeOrion version you have is from June 2017, before dbenage-cx committed his fix for this issue. It's somewhat surprising to me that they did not roll out the 0.4.7.1 bugfix release for 17.10 since it is still supported, but I c'est la vie. 18.04LTS and 18.10 are using the 0.4.7.1 release and so their repos will have the linked fix.

So debenage-cx has given you a command-line rendering fix that should be an available resolution for you, or also this news should give you confidence that if you take the minor hassle of building FO yourself from source that would resolve your problem also, with better performance.

If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

So Murdoc, the FreeOrion version you have is from June 2017, before dbenage-cx committed his fix for this issue. It's somewhat surprising to me that they did not roll out the 0.4.7.1 bugfix release for 17.10 since it is still supported, but I c'est la vie. 18.04LTS and 18.10 are using the 0.4.7.1 release and so their repos will have the linked fix.

Wow, I didn't expect any more answers. So many more ideas, thanks to all!
I checked and it is indeed an issue with the visibility circles, I can either have them or the star lanes, unless I use the software rendering which makes the pointer drag.
I tried o01eg's PPA but it turned out not to be compatible with my current saved games; is it because of it being a newer version? I didn't think such a minor update would break them, but it loaded up the game with no stars, planets, ships, or empires. It got the turn number right, but that's about it.

Minor update? Ah, because the version number didn't change much, I suppose. It looks to me like you are talking about nearly a full year of dev work. Since this isn't the kind of app where people really need their old save files to remain compatible, we put just a fairly modest bit of effort into maintaining backwards compatibility from month to month, let alone year to year.

So I hope you can be happy that the version from o0leg's PPA works for you.

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